by Eileen Fleming | Dissident Voice, July 18th, 2009
Vanunu’s most recent tribulations began on January 25, 2006, when he was convicted by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order that prohibited him from talking to non-Israelis and for attempting to leave the state [he has no passport] by taking a cab from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity in 2004-his first since he was released from 18 years-most all of it in solitary-from Ashkeleon prison.
The original indictment included 22 different violations, Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of four. On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six months in jail just for speaking to non-Israeli media — and not on the content — of what are hundreds of conversations that began the day Vanunu emerged from a tomb sized cell for providing the photographic proof in 1986 of Israel’s underground WMD facility. However, he was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the Internet and via video and voice chats.
Two days before President Bush’s first trip to Israel, and a day before Vanunu’s appeal was to begin, Israel sentenced him to community service. But Israel does not recognize occupied east Jerusalem as part of the community although it is the only neighborhood where Vanunu has lived since April 21, 2004. On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced his sentence to three months in jail, “In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy.”
On June 14, 2009 Mordechai Vanunu told this reporter, “They renewed the restrictions to not speak to foreigners until November. I meet foreigners every day. I am talking with people every day. But I am not writing or announcing the appeal until after it happens. It was scheduled for January, then May 6th and June 18th. Now I am waiting for a new court date. The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.”
Vanunu returned to court on July 6, 2009 and “his attorney Avigdor Feldman…and the state agreed that after six months, pending a review of his conduct, Vanunu will be able to ask for the restrictions to be lifted and be allowed to travel abroad.
Feldman said, “Vanunu is not going to change. He will still be the man who left the reactor and transferred sensitive material over to The Sunday Times. But it is inconceivable that a man be held in Israel for his entire life because of this. The world has anyway lost interest in the subject…You can say a lot of things about Vanunu, but you cannot say he is dishonest. Until now he wouldn’t commit to refrain from speaking of [Israel’s nuclear program], but now he is. He wants to live, to raise a home, a family and children.”
However, the “Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish, did not agree with Feldman’s ‘lack of interest’ theory, saying that “the case is still generating great interest, like any other security-related case. The media’s attention he gets is proof of that.”
Vanunu told reporters, “All I’m interested in is freedom. Give me a passport and I can tour the world. I want to walk around the streets of New York.”
That evening I phoned Vanunu and as always he said he was, “OK…You have freedom of speech and freedom of movement. Do what you want. But I am not publishing anything…Everything is already on the Internet.”
I met Vanunu for the first time on June 21, 2005 and have seen him on all seven of my trips to Jerusalem, but not until June 14, 2009 did he fill me in on why he has not written and published his own story. Vanunu said that he and a writer had been openly meeting in the garden of the American Colony and working on his book soon after his release from Ashkelon, but a Palestinian spy turned them both in and the authorities threatened Vanunu with more jail time if he published anything without going through Israeli censors.
However, Vanunu did write that on February 22, 2006, in a Jerusalem court it was revealed that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of his Hotmail account before a court order had even been obtained and they eluded that Vanunu was being investigated for espionage.
Vanunu wrote, “Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details, three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated. It is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad.”
His attorney Michael Sfard repeatedly requested Police Representative Mr. Peterburg to specifically state what type of espionage activity Vanunu was accused of.
According to Vanunu, “The policeman did not have any answers and said that he brought all the evidence to the court. When Sfard asked him again about any material related to the espionage charge, Peterburg had no answers.
“Sfard proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage.
“The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders, called Hisaion, which are documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers. This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense.”
Vanunu reported that his secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for “attempting to leave the country” while traveling the four miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the confiscation of his private property by thirty IDF that stormed into his room at St. George’s Cathedral had all “been done…under the false and misleading statements to the courts of ‘suspicion of espionage’, and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes. And the fact is that I have not committed any crimes.”
On St. Patrick Day 2005, Vanunu spoke to the media immediately after he had been arrested for speaking with the media in 2004.
Vanunu said: “I have no more secrets to tell and have not set foot in Dimona for more than 18 years. I have been out of prison, although not free, for one year now. Despite the illegal restrictions on my speech, I have again and again spoken out against the use of nuclear weapons anywhere and by any nation. I have given away no sensitive secrets because I have none. I have not acted against the interests of Israel nor do I wish to. I have been investigated by the police again and again, and re-arrested. They have found nothing. I have done nothing but speak for peace and world safety from a nuclear disaster…I do not want to harm Israel, but rather to warn of an enormous danger. I want to work for world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons. I want the human race to survive.”
Eileen Fleming is the author of Keep Hope Alive and Memoirs of a Nice Irish American Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory and the producer of 30 Minutes With Vanunu. Email her at ecumei@gmail.com. Read other articles by Eileen, or visit Eileen’s website.
Peace and Justice Post 
The Vanunu Opera and Christmas 2009
December 7, 2009It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings is a proverb that means do NOT assume the outcome of something-such as a sports game-until it has finished.
The proverb originated from Richard Wagner’s opera suite Der Ring des Nibelungen in its last part, Götterdämmerung, when the fat lady/the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, delivers an aria that lasts nearly ten minutes and ends the drama.
Thirty-three years ago, Mordechai Vanunu began listening to Wagner, a 19th century German composer [who wrote both music and libretto for every one of his works] because, “Opera inspires me, it gives me strength. When I was twenty-two I stopped listening to pop; The Beatles, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan. I like challenges and began listening to opera. It builds skyscrapers in my mind. Opera is nutrition for the brain. Opera enlarges and develops the brain. Opera speaks to my brain…Every morning I am in my room until eleven listening to opera. I find ways to enjoy myself as my way of resistance. I transform anger into positive energy.”
Vanunu told me that during my last visit to occupied east Jerusalem in June 2009. At that time he was also walking 2 ½ hours a day to the checkpoints he is denied the right to cross that lead to Bethlehem and Lazarus’ Tomb. Vanunu had also been playing coed volleyball and having dinner weekly with his friends from the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City, where he became a member three years ago and has attended both the English and German services because he liked the music. Shortly thereafter, he quit meeting reporters as well as foreign supporters.
Three weeks after my visit, while back in Israeli High Court, Vanunu learned he was again denied the right to leave the state for another six months, which literally is up on December 21, 2009.
Whether out of boredom with the topic or weariness, Vanunu finally committed to refrain from speaking of Israel’s nuclear program during the July 6, 2009 Supreme Court trial while President Dorit Beinish, claimed his “case is still generating great interest, like any other security-related case. The media’s attention he gets is proof of that.” [1]
There is no proof to back up that judge’s claim and in fact, the media’s silence has worked to collude in the injustices Vanunu has endured, for he has been demonized in Israel and remains largely unknown in America. However, the Media’s negligence has conspired to help create an iconic hero for proponents of the abolition of nuclear weapons and supporters for human rights united on the Internet and so, until Israel allows Vanunu the right to full freedom, the human interest in-and the disseminating of-his drama will grow and be spread on the world wide web.
When I met Vanunu in 2005, I was in the midst of writing my first book, but it was not until 2004, when I began researching for it, did I first come across his name. In the Chapter: Thanksgiving Eve, 1987 from KEEP HOPE ALIVE, I wrote:
“I have yet to read or heard a word from the American press about Vanunu who had worked in a very compartmentalized position in the secret underground Dimona nuclear research center in the Negev. The nuclear plant had a sign outside claiming it was a Textile factory and it seems that when Vanunu finally realized he was involved in the horrific work of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, he shot two rolls of film inside of the restricted areas. Seems security was very lax and this low level tech was able to obtain the keys in the shower room that opened the doors to what Israel has not admitted to…Vanunu quit the job and leaves Israel and carried around the undeveloped film for nearly a year as he traveled throughout Europe. He ended up in Sydney, Australia and converted to Christianity.
“A few weeks after he shared his story with a British reporter…Vanunu and the reporter returned to London, and while the London Times was verifying his story, Vanunu mysteriously disappeared. The photos proved the fact that Israel had become a major nuclear power, but not a word has been heard from my government or press!
“The Sunday Times reports this incredible news that Israel’s underground plutonium plant has material for two hundred nuclear warheads of advanced design, but not a word have I read about it or heard from the US media! It makes me wonder about all the iron curtains the media and government have raised as a shield from the truth.” [2]
Governments get away with mayhem and murder whenever the media fails or is prevented from doing their job; to investigate and report the truth, no matter how ugly or brutal.
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Tags:Dimona nuclear research center, Eileen Fleming, Israel, Mordechai Vanunu, two hundred nuclear warheads
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